18 ms·

My MacBook Air M1 is dead

119 points by itg 5y ago

yumraj 5y ago
Given his use case which involves massive video and photo editing, and the reports of excessive writes on the SSD in the M1s is it possible his SSD just reached EOL? I don’t know what the symptoms of an SSD reaching EOL are, would it just stop responding at all? I don’t think we still have heard anything from Apple about the massive SSD writes and that for me is the biggest concern before making an M1 based purchase.
- Saris 5y ago
  I’d be incredibly surprised if that was the case, even cheap budget SSDs have 500+ TBW ratings. I’m amazed this person had 800GB of important data on a laptop and yet zero backups. Especially when a backup service like backblaze is $5 a month and you just set it up in 2 minutes and it runs on its own.
  - salawat 5y ago
    I am surprised this person had an encyclopedia and didn't Xerox it, leaving it on someone else's bookshelf. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone reaches for someone else's computer to look after their important things. Sad though it is that they learned their lesson the hard way, they can't really be faulted for it.
    - vorpalhex 5y ago
      Nothing keeping you from using time machine with your own NAS or harddrive.
  - BearOso 5y ago
    If there was 800GB of static data, it was almost full, so the wear-leveling process wouldn’t be optimal and it would write over a small part of the flash cells over and over. In that case you could exceed the program-erase lifetime, but not necessarily the TBW. We know the total TBW was high, though, so it was even more excessive. From what I’ve read, Apple has fixed this problem in a recent Mac OS version. Apparently, it was a swapping bug.
    - lawnchair_larry 5y ago
      Where did you read that it was fixed or acknowledged as a bug? It definitely was not fixed.
      - BearOso 5y ago
        This thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ssd-swap-high-usage-of-terabytes-written.2284893/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ssd-swap-high-usage-of-... Posters had narrowed down the excessive writes down by limiting memory usage, so they knew it was a swap problem, and some users said the latest OS fixed it. Now that I’ve checked it again, they’re saying it’s better but not fixed.
    - 542458 5y ago
      I believe that modern SSDs shuffle data around so that wear levelling does still work even with nearly full drives.
    - pkaye 5y ago
      Its the difference between static and dynamic wear leveling. Static wear leveling will shuffle around the data in static blocks to even out the program-erase cycles.
- gowld 5y ago
  Do M1 Macs have user-facing drive health / write-count reports?
  - yumraj 5y ago
    Yes, there are some reports, including some posts on HN itself, where people are seeing unusually high TBs of writes - most likely due to swap. See this: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=m1+writes https://hn.algolia.com/?q=m1+writes
- dannyw 5y ago
  SSDs that reach EOL should go into read only mode; not die.
  - BearOso 5y ago
    Maybe it did. But it was the boot drive and soldered to the motherboard. So the OS would need to write to it and there’s no way to get the data off in a third-party manner. That’s kind of the big issue.
    - lutorm 5y ago
      Do new macs not show the "sad mac" or "cross-eyed mac" if they can't read the boot drive?
      - dannyw 5y ago
        That hasn't been a thing for a decade.
rvz 5y ago
And there you have it. What have I been telling the M1 hype squad over the past few months over first-gen products from Apple? [1] [2] [3] [4] Not even Apple support knows the cause of this issue. You are better off skipping it altogether and waiting for the M2 or higher. Losing a $1000 laptop due to heavy work is already one unacceptable thing, but replacing the whole unit and losing your work in order to 'fix it' is another unacceptable 'solution'. Always have a backup handy. I doubt the regular folk buying this machine would be bothered to do this anyway so the risk of this event runs higher for them. Especially when the SSD is baked into the motherboard. I rest my magnificent case. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26247531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26247531 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26247333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26247333 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26879674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26879674 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26887380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26887380
- ecf 5y ago
  > And there you have it. What have I been telling the M1 hype squad... > I rest my magnificent case Perhaps people didn’t care about what you had to say because you come off as insufferable.
  - rvz 5y ago
    Or maybe that they now realise that they know I am insufferably right (and hate me for it) and are now coming to terms to what they have just purchased. Well I guess we'll have to see if the fanatics and the hype squad have learned their lesson into jumping into immature first-gen Apple products.
  - rvz 5y ago
    So now I was censored because I was right, thus I will repeat my previous messsage: Or maybe that they now realise that they know I am insufferably right (and hate me for it) and are now coming to terms to what they have just purchased. Well I guess we'll have to see if the fanatics and the hype squad have learned their lesson into jumping into immature first-gen Apple products.
- 5y ago
thesnide 5y ago
Regardless of the hardware, it just tells one lesson : everything can fail, do have a full backup strategy.
- Yeroc 5y ago
  Certainly. The lesson I took from this was that the risk of data loss is much higher on the MacBooks these days because the it's not simply the chance of the SSD failing that could cause data loss but also a failure of any of the motherboard components as well. It's something I hadn't considered and something definitely worth keeping in mind.
aaroninsf 5y ago
This is an old story, and it's pretty clear that SSD EOL is the actual problem. That's a problem, for everyone using SSD, and for Apple, for not managing write, monitoring it, warning about it, ec., but this not a problem unique to the M1. The author should add an update to this effect.
gowld 5y ago
Spending $2399 on a maxed out but entry-level laptop, to use as an intense workstation, seems a bad idea. There's a reason the Mac Mini has a fan.
- dannyw 5y ago
  Thermal management isn't rocket silence. People don't report their (passive) iPads die from heat, even though in sure some have been subjected to extreme workstation workloads.
  - ozten 5y ago
    However, a significant portion of rocket science is thermal management.
- watermelon0 5y ago
  Author didn't complain about performance issues, so I assume thermal throttling didn't kick in for their workload, or it wasn't noticeable.
terminalserver 5y ago
For anyone reading this..... macOS has Time Machine.... you just plug in an external usb disk as big as you can afford, tell time machine to use it, and it backs up your stuff in the background. There’s no excuse for losing data cause your primary disk crashes.
- merb 5y ago
  time machine uses snapshots, which might take your disk space away if you do not know it. just for anybody wondering why they do not have any disk space left of their 1tb drive, besides only using like 400g
  - sparker72678 5y ago
    The disk space used for snapshots is automatically re-claimed by the OS when it's needed by the user. The trade off is near-instant backup images. And while MacOS sometimes has issues expediently clearing space the was previously used for snapshots, tools like DaisyDisk and others can force its hand if you need. Bottom line, you don't lose available disk space by using Time Machine.
    - kergonath 5y ago
      That’s the theory, and it works like that on my MBP. But for some reason on my old iMac, snapshots used to just accumulate and every so often things start crashing because there was no space left, causing all sorts of issues. Sometimes the OS couldn’t boot because of that, it really was a pain. And yes, you can nuke snapshots preemptively, but often the first visible sign was Mail having corruption issues because it’s database was borked, at which point it was too late.
- hctaw 5y ago
  Time Machine can't run on my Mac because there's not enough space on disk for it to run. Third party backup services that can function with the comically small default SSDs are preferable.
jbirer 5y ago
Just buy the 16GB one like I did, my SSD usage is roughly 50GB a day.
jimmies 5y ago
The problem here was that Apple is the only one who knows what's wrong with this new laptop and they don't have time to try to recover the data. Had the rights-to-repair law passed, the author would have had the option to try with a third party that could have saved his work (or to see whether it is an option). For many, $1000 for not losing two weeks of work is a small price to pay compared to redoing all the work. The issue with having only first-party repair is that you have no choice other than to lose data.
- finneganscat 5y ago
  You do have another choice: backup your important data, at least daily!
  - nomel 5y ago
    What's old is new, I suppose. This is one of the reasons the cloud storage services became so popular. Properly backing up data, with multiple backups, not all piled in the flood prone corner of a closet, is not fun.
  - pixl97 5y ago
    Which can be very difficult, on the road where you have low bandwidth especially.
    - cassianoleal 5y ago
      It's really not hard to carry an external drive. Even tiny thumb drives have massive capacities these days. Edit: typo
- ska 5y ago
  > is that you have no choice other than to lose data. Right-to-repair is great and all, but trusting the storage on a laptop is crazy. I've had basically the same thing happen with Dells, etc. Forget just laptops, though they are more failure prone. Trusting the storage on any single machine for critical work data for any longer than necessary is unprofessional.
terminalserver 5y ago
Is it possible that the small amount of RAM on M1 machines leads to virtual memory thrashing the SSD?
- watermelon0 5y ago
  Yes. There were many articles lately about heavy writes due to swapping, but in most cases it shouldn't impact the lifespan so much.
dandare 5y ago
What does it mean the SSD is soldered to the motherboard? If I was to loose 2 months of work I would rip the disks off with my teeth. What is the real issue here?
- flemhans 5y ago
  The data is encrypted with the key stored in the T2 chip (if it's still called that) so you couldn't even just solder it to another board.
  - watermelon0 5y ago
    Shouldn't Apple be able to recover the data if T2 is intact? It's possible that it's not worth to them, but I'd think it's doable.
    - viraptor 5y ago
      It's of course technically doable - the laptop itself is a device that talks to the drive via T2. But it's not something Apple wants to do. This was an issue for years already before M1 was introduced.
  - hesk 5y ago
    Is this the same as Filevault or is it something different?
    - fmajid 5y ago
      Similar, but done in secure hardware in a T2 embedded inside the M1. The complete I/O path is protected.
- hctaw 5y ago
  You have to backup more regularly than every two months... And Apple replaces the entire motherboard if a component on it fails. The agreement that you may lose data has been around awhile and it's just boilerplate. When mucking around on a board they aren't going to guarantee anything - and I don't know if third party repair shops would do that either. There is always the chance someone screws up and breaks something.
jccalhoun 5y ago
Always have a back up! Always be backing up!
MR4D 5y ago
When Chia mining really ramps up, it will kill off SSDs faster than a T-rex in a petting zoo. I think the horror stories are going to just explode. If Apple has any weakness here (and this might be the butterfly keyboard all over again), then their products are going to get absolutely trashed in the media.[0] [0] - I use apple products pretty much everywhere, so I'm not looking forward to this, just presuming it will highlight any SSD weakness they might actually have.
- CharlesW 5y ago
  > When Chia mining really ramps up, it will kill off SSDs faster than a T-rex in a petting zoo. It's possible, but the "farmer" would have to be very serious about Chia and also not have read any FAQs, not watched any videos, not visited any forums, etc. A healthy fear of plotting on one's boot drive is the first thing drilled into Chia-heads' heads.
adrianmonk 5y ago
How technically feasible would it be for Apple to design emergency drive access into the hardware? Even though the flash is soldered on, you could still picture some kind of connector that allows a special device to operate that part of the board independently of the other stuff on the board. The special device could even be another laptop of the same model that supplies power. Disassemble both, connect a cable, and essentially "move" the drive to a different computer even though it's physically still unmoved.
- Crosseye_Jack 5y ago
  They used to have this. It was the Life boat connector. You would connect a magic black box to another mac and the connector to the logic boards life boat connector and you were able to migrate the customer data from the dead board. HOWEVER since they started encrypting the userdata at a hardware level they removed that port (because unless you went via the T2 chip the data you extracted from the drive would just be random data). EDIT: Could they in theory add a port to machines going forward that as long as the T2 chip (or what ever they use today, i think they incorperated it into the M1 chip itself) was still functional (as it holds the keys). Sure, why not? But they would have create a way to unlock the T2 (or what ever chip) but apple could create a way either by having a master key or devise keys based on serial numbers, etc etc etc. The Mac they use to recover data via the life boat connector could phone home to Apple and with the right auth be granted an auth to unlock the chip and allow data retrival. If I were to give apple the benefit of doubt, they might not want to as they don't want a way to be compelled to decrypt customers data on their hardware (Be it a 3 letter agency or a rouge employee).
  - 542458 5y ago
    What about a port for unlocking the storage via T2 with the user’s password as normal, just bypassing everything else on the mobo so that data would still be recoverable if the dead component was something other than the T2 or storage?
    - Crosseye_Jack 5y ago
nunez 5y ago
Damn; if I had to mess with 800GB of data, there's no way that it would ONLY live on my laptop. Either way, sorry for OP's loss.
- qayxc 5y ago
  They mentioned they also had a custom Windows desktop as well. I guess one problem is that cross-system data synchronisation is still a non-trivial task.
ksec 5y ago
>3. I wasn’t the ONLY ONE who encountered this. You should check out the posts in MacRumors and this long thread in Reddit. This issue is quite well known for those who followed the Apple M1 rollout closely. My suspicious is that 1. It is the same USB / Thunderbolt Charging issue again as with previous Intel Mac. Where basically the USB-C somehow fried the CPU. ( Louis Rossmann has tons of video on it ) 2. The CPU / System is simply not designed for these type of usage. Especially with zero cooling. ( Sometimes, I would even leave the machine switched on for overnight rendering ) And it could also be other component that overheat. Apple needs to sell an official Time Capsule and Make Encrypted Backup to iCloud as option for Offline Backup.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  > The CPU / System is simply not designed for these type of usage. Maybe they shouldn’t advertise it as such then? I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a $2400 machine to be left on overnight without worrying about it being fried in the morning.
  - eldelshell 5y ago
    You have to understand the Apple fanboy mindset. If it breaks, it's your fault. Soldered SSD? Do backups you dummy! Over heating? Just use it for email and browsing. Dead pixels? Get better glasses. No ESC key? Buy an external keyboard. Keys not working? Don't push them so hard, they're butterflies!
  - ksec 5y ago
    >Maybe they shouldn’t advertise it as such then? I really dont think they did. It should be MacBook Pro with proper cooling. And personally I dont think overnight rendering, that is 100% CPU usage for 8+ hours should even be done on a laptop with no cooling fans. The $2400 price tag was because of Apple's ridiculous memory and Storage upgrade cost.
- qayxc 5y ago
  > The CPU / System is simply not designed for these type of usage. Especially with zero cooling. While I agree that consumer hardware in general and laptops in particular aren't designed for this usage, internal overheating should never be the cause for catastrophic failure. A system should be designed to throttle down or shut down before risking permanent damage. Should this be a heat related problem, I'd consider it a design flaw. Degraded performance is acceptable, permanent damage to non-replaceable internal hardware isn't. > Apple needs to sell an official Time Capsule and Make Encrypted Backup to iCloud as option for Offline Backup. Not going to happen. Since they disbanded the router team 3 years ago, there's zero chance of a Time Capsule product coming back anytime soon. They want customers to use iCloud and I think that's the better option for most users. People like the person in this blog are professionals and should use professional backup solutions (whether offline or online).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dm319 5y ago
Did anyone see the linked article at the end which described very large writes to the SSD in short time frames? I think Marcan had joined in on the twitter conversation. Lots of terabytes in just a fee months. Any ideas why this might be?
- z2 5y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26244093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26244093
- gothroach 5y ago
  I saw him mention it at the end of this article, but the way the link was presented caused me to lose any interest in clicking it. Is it a story worth reading?
  - acidbaseextract 5y ago
    The style was obnoxious I agree. If you're interested in buying an M1 MacBook — I wouldn't buy without being aware of the need to watch SSD writes. It seems like M1 devices with low memory have scenarios that they will use their SSDs crazy hard.
- mastax 5y ago
  Over-reliance on swap due to small RAM and fast SSD, I would guess.
- akmarinov 5y ago
  Wasn’t that debunked with the tool used to monitor the writes not being updated for M1s so it was showing garbage?
seltzered_ 5y ago
Was 'Target Disk Mode' (i.e. using another mac to mount the broken macbook) attempted to recover data?
- digitxpc 5y ago
  That would require the computer to be bootable, so it wouldn't allow you to get around a fried motherboard sadly.
  - seltzered_ 5y ago
    "It just blacked out and showed no signs of life at all" good point, thanks.
diveanon 5y ago
This is why it never pays to be an early adopter. I am very satisfied in my decision to wait a few generations on this.
- rvz 5y ago
  Well we did warn them enough times to avoid first-gen Apple products and 'going all in' on the risk and now they are the ones crying on the bench having lost their work because 'it died' for no reason. It never hurts to wait for Apple to fix these issues. By then the software for Apple Silicon will be optimised on a faster chip. (M2 and higher)
Iwan-Zotow 5y ago
Beautiful plumage, isn't it?
jonplackett 5y ago
This is a very long article with only one real lesson learned. BACK UP! Just get a backblaze account or something.
- ajross 5y ago
  Two lessons: back up your shit, and prefer hardware with replaceable storage like M.2 slots.
  - vxNsr 5y ago
    Yes very much this. A soldered SSD is absolutely putting a real limit to the lifespan of your pc. Not to mention making it unreasonably expensive to try to recover data in event of system board failure.
    - defaultname 5y ago
      Data recovery is impossible [IN THIS SITUATION for those who want to tell a tale about Linux] given full disk encryption. Even if the SSD were removable, and presuming there is no issue with the SSD -- they fail too -- there is nothing he could have gotten from it. This is true on modern Windows devices as well. There are devices that use passphrase encryption, or similes, but they're a usability problem so it isn't what Apple does. Devices are lost (failed, stolen, burned, destroyed) as a simple fact of life. Anyone who doesn't have an immediate recovery process with negligible loss simply isn't being a professional. His laptop could have easily been nicked from a coffee shop. It's why most of us simply don't sweat this at all. I will never be in a situation where I'm desperate to recover what's on a device. Remarkable that the comments are full of people speculating about failures and then, remarkably, getting angry and on a soap box about their speculation. Computing device failed. Amazing story at 11!
      - Aeolun 5y ago
        > I will never be in a situation where I'm desperate to recover what's on a device. I will never be in a situation where I’m desperate to recover two months worth of data, but even losing a day is pretty inconvenient.
wooque 5y ago
>You have 1 free member-only story left this month. Sign up for Medium and get an extra one for a love of God stop using Medium
- KMnO4 5y ago
  Is there an objectively better (in every way) alternative to Medium? Not for me (I host me own), but for the next time it comes up. I don’t want to tell people “don’t use Medium” without an alternative to suggest.
  - alex_g 5y ago
    Ghost, or Wordpress, or just write some markdown or html. Honestly it doesn't need to be better in every way to be better.
    - fmajid 5y ago
      GitHub pages with Hugo: https://gohugo.io/hosting-and-deployment/hosting-on-github/ https://gohugo.io/hosting-and-deployment/hosting-on-github/
    - benhurmarcel 5y ago
      Ghost and Wordpress aren't free. Medium is.
      - alex_g 5y ago
        Both are free. As for hosting, Wordpress has a free hosting option.
  - diragon 5y ago
    Writing on a piece of paper and throwing it to the wind? Seriously, though, if you have an inch of computing skills, any of the static site generators combined with a free tier CDN like Netlify. The most popular generators are pretty easy to use. But perhaps I'm underestimating how hard that actually is.
solarkraft 5y ago
> You can technically desolder the SSD from the logic board Well, you can, but even that wouldn’t get you your data back. It’s all encrypted, tied to the hardware. There are data recovery tools for MacBooks, but I suppose in this specific case an essential part for that was broken. The data probably isn’t worth the price of doing it (no warranty, all money gone if it fails), but if it was you could’ve called up a component level repair shop, which can sometimes fix issues at a fraction of what Apple charges and preserve your data by replacing only broken components instead of rushing to replace the whole board.
- grishka 5y ago
  > It’s all encrypted, tied to the hardware. And that's a terrible idea to begin with. Yes, encryption is a good thing. But it's only good as long as it's not tied to a particular piece of hardware against user's will. You should be able to remove an SSD from a dead laptop and plug it into a working one, and, after entering the correct password, be able to access it. Apple seems to view this exact scenario as an attack for some reason.
  - fmajid 5y ago
    An active component like the T2 can ensure the keys are erased after N failed attempts. A passive encryption key cannot. There are indeed also disadvantages to this.
    - grishka 5y ago
      But then you are encouraged to circumvent this by making backups.
    - fomine3 5y ago
      Similarly on PC, TPM lockout for decrypt PIN after some tries, then BitLocker requires user to input very long generated passphrase (virtually unbreakable, same as Apple's internal key). They can also export encryption key. Of course exported key must be stored to secure place.
stavrus 5y ago
This isn't specific to the M1. I had my MBP 2016 13" die in the same exact way about two years ago. Same failure mode where it just refused to boot no matter what I did, though it was possible to sort of turn it on if you left it alone for a couple of days. Was able to use that to pull the data off the machine and create a Time Machine backup, but it turns out that Time Machine can lie to you about having completed a backup so I would have lost all of my data were it not for the manual backup I performed. What was frustrating to me was that I knew my model had a diagnostics port that allowed direct access to the SSD (see https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/24/apple-special-cdm-tool-macbook-pro-ssd-recover-repairs/ https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/24/apple-special-cdm-tool-macboo...) to pull the data off of it, but the service wasn't offered when I went to get my machine repaired. I was forced to accept the data loss from having the logic board replaced. I later had bluetooth issues on the same laptop, and that required another logic board replacement. Which, surprise, came with data loss once again. Also had a lot of fun learning with that repair that Apple changed the extension backups are stored as, and Time Machine can't recognize the new one as a restore source for some reason unless you rename the folder to use the old one. Wasted quite a few hours on that, and Apple's phone support had no idea about why Time Machine wasn't seeing it. Anyway, moral of the story is, backup often, and have more than one backup method, unless you like losing your data.
- thedanbob 5y ago
  > Anyway, moral of the story is, backup often, and have more than one backup method, unless you like losing your data. And I would recommend that no one use Time Machine for backups. I have several anecdotes of my own where TM backups became silently corrupted or a seemingly good backup refused to restore, and you can find many more examples in the Apple forums. An unreliable backup isn’t a backup at all.
  - vardump 5y ago
    I have 4x Time Machine backups. Hopefully I'm safe? Surely at least one of those separate independent backups should work?
    - 5y ago
cesarb 5y ago
> this laptop suddenly died when I was using Adobe Photoshop for a project. Yes, dead. It wasn’t taking its time to “shut down”. It just blacked out and showed no signs of life at all. [...] and it just wouldn’t turn on. I was in a similar situation once. My laptop suddenly died, and it just wouldn't turn on; plugging in the charger would instantly extinguish the charger light, and that light would only come back if I unplugged the charger from the wall and plugged it again to the wall (but not to the laptop). The solution was also similar: the entire motherboard had to be replaced under warranty. The cause was probably a short somewhere on the motherboard's power delivery subsystem. The main difference: my laptop's storage wasn't soldered onto the motherboard. I lost nothing other than the time it took before the technician came to do the repair.
- eli 5y ago
  There are so many good and easy backup solutions that I can’t imagine gambling on the SSD itself always being readable.
timnetworks 5y ago
It's a bit discouraging that the most valuable company in the world makes shiny garbage toys that are a nightmare to use in a professional capacity.
- noisem4ker 5y ago
  Even more discouraging is that the whole SV-influenced tech hivemind appears to have adopted them as their professional tools of choice.
FpUser 5y ago
200GB cache, working on internal 1TB SSD, huge video files and the OS all on 1TB SSD ( which might be questionable quality endurance wise ). This is just asking for disaster. I suspect that the SSD had just reached the limit on total bytes written and went belly up. Not having backup is a cherry on top. People just literally asking for disaster to happen. Curious why Medium even bother with publishing articles like this.
bobbylarrybobby 5y ago
The follow up article is interesting — after replacing the motherboard, the new Mac was writing tens of gigabytes of data a day, which is obviously not good for the SSD. Other users reported the same issue. That’s, like, really bad, right?
anfilt 5y ago
The idea of soldering the main storage still seems insane to me. Also it's not like a standard M.2 connector is profile connection either.
efficax 5y ago
devices fail. it’s not something you can avoid in the aggregate. backup your data!
mastrsushi 5y ago
>Okay, I may have exaggerated a little I really feel motivated to digest a blog post where even the writer admits that the title is click bait.
Perolan 5y ago
I had, and still have, a 2014 MacBook pro. I bought it used in 2015/16 but still paid near a grand so I babied it. Pushed it as a dev machine but took good physical care of it. Eventually same or similar issue where it just wouldn't boot. I took it to Apple and they said they had to send it off somewhere else but they suspected gpu failure, they noticed some screen tearing and said they could do that for me no problem and warrantied it. Got a call later that my MacBook had passed the gpu tests and they had to do more to figure out what was up. Another call and they said my MacBook had water damage and they wouldn't touch it. I called bs because they wouldn't have warrantied the screen if it had water damage, and also I babied the hell out of the thing. The person I was talking to said she was going to get to the bottom of it and would call back. They replaced every component in the damn laptop, but only after it broke and they tried to take no fault. I'm never going to stop complaining about this experience but at least I still have this laptop for now
- brokenmachine 5y ago
  I've seen so many comments online from people saying that Apple claimed there was water damage when they were sure that there wasn't. I bet there's something wrong with their water ingress detectors.
- totalZero 5y ago
  I am having a similarly bad experience with a Late 2013 MBP after Apple screwed up a battery replacement and the charging port started overheating. I took it to various Apple stores multiple times (they wouldn't do the repair by mail). First time, they didn't even test the charging system; battery cycle count was the same when I picked it up. Second time, they gave the laptop back to me with the bottom cover screws installed in the wrong places. Third time, they tried to tell me it was a preexisting issue or maybe due to a third-party SSD. The people involved are very friendly but none of them seem to have any idea how a computer works, and they seem to care more about managing my expectations and making me disinfect the LCD with an alcohol wipe than they do about repairing a computer they damaged.
roop 5y ago
If you're using a USB hub/dock (the author says he isn't), you should upgrade to macOS 11.2.2 because: > macOS Big Sur 11.2.2 prevents MacBook Pro (2019 or later) and MacBook Air (2020 or later) models from incurring damage when they are connected to certain third-party, non-compliant powered USB-C hubs and docks. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211896#macos1122 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211896#macos1122
- totalZero 5y ago
  How would I test for damage? I had a Sanho/Hyperdrive dock that repeatedly crashed my 2020 MBP. I switched it out for a CalDigit and haven't had any problems since then, but I don't know how to ensure that nothing was harmed.
  - roop 5y ago
    I don’t know. You should contact Apple support maybe?
mproud 5y ago
I don't care what kind of computer you have. Back up your shit.
brokenmachine 5y ago
All these comments explaining that you can't have an SSD that's not permanently locked to the secure enclave on the Logic Board™ because of "security". Which means that a customer really needs a backup... Which by definition can't be locked to the motherboard. SMH. Apple™ apologists come up with any justification, no matter how implausible, for Apple™'s user-hostile self-serving design choices. I guess it's just a happy coincidence that then they can charge customers for using their Cloud as a backup, because they've removed any autonomy that the customer might have had otherwise. One button saying, "set your own recovery password", and one 20c connector, and then any customer or lowly genius bar™ Logic Board™ replacement drone could easily transplant the drive into another PC when the self destructing crap Apple™-designed Logic board™ with tiny inadequate heatsink or secure enclave™ linked touchbar or dust-powered exploding keyboard switch or whatever other obvious self destruct mechanism they've designed in inevitably kicks the bucket. The cherry on the shit sundae is that they would still get to sell another mac to the lucky 𝚟̶𝚒̶𝚌̶𝚝̶𝚒̶𝚖̶ customer, so there is no advantage to them in preventing this. Apple™ just doing asshole things because Apple™. It's like the story of the scorpion and the frog [1]. "I couldn't help it. It's in my nature." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog#Synopsis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog#Syno...
reph2097 5y ago
That money will buy you two Zenbooks, both of which are faster and easier to repair. Just saying.
Gys 5y ago
The article mentions https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx to regularly check the SSD and aware of potential problems. Has anybody experience with this app?
lasereyes136 5y ago
The lesson here is Always backup your data on a continuous basis! Computers break in unrecoverable ways all the time. While there is a low chance of your computer doing that, it happens. Macs come with Time Machine just for this reason, use it.

119 points by itg 5y ago

Given his use case which involves massive video and photo editing, and the reports of excessive writes on the SSD in the M1s is it possible his SSD just reached EOL? I don’t know what the symptoms of an SSD reaching EOL are, would it just stop responding at all? I don’t think we still have heard anything from Apple about the massive SSD writes and that for me is the biggest concern before making an M1 based purchase.

Saris 5y ago
I’d be incredibly surprised if that was the case, even cheap budget SSDs have 500+ TBW ratings. I’m amazed this person had 800GB of important data on a laptop and yet zero backups. Especially when a backup service like backblaze is $5 a month and you just set it up in 2 minutes and it runs on its own.
- salawat 5y ago
  I am surprised this person had an encyclopedia and didn't Xerox it, leaving it on someone else's bookshelf. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone reaches for someone else's computer to look after their important things. Sad though it is that they learned their lesson the hard way, they can't really be faulted for it.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    Nothing keeping you from using time machine with your own NAS or harddrive.
- BearOso 5y ago
  If there was 800GB of static data, it was almost full, so the wear-leveling process wouldn’t be optimal and it would write over a small part of the flash cells over and over. In that case you could exceed the program-erase lifetime, but not necessarily the TBW. We know the total TBW was high, though, so it was even more excessive. From what I’ve read, Apple has fixed this problem in a recent Mac OS version. Apparently, it was a swapping bug.
  - lawnchair_larry 5y ago
    Where did you read that it was fixed or acknowledged as a bug? It definitely was not fixed.
    - BearOso 5y ago
      This thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ssd-swap-high-usage-of-terabytes-written.2284893/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ssd-swap-high-usage-of-... Posters had narrowed down the excessive writes down by limiting memory usage, so they knew it was a swap problem, and some users said the latest OS fixed it. Now that I’ve checked it again, they’re saying it’s better but not fixed.
  - 542458 5y ago
    I believe that modern SSDs shuffle data around so that wear levelling does still work even with nearly full drives.
  - pkaye 5y ago
    Its the difference between static and dynamic wear leveling. Static wear leveling will shuffle around the data in static blocks to even out the program-erase cycles.
gowld 5y ago
Do M1 Macs have user-facing drive health / write-count reports?
- yumraj 5y ago
  Yes, there are some reports, including some posts on HN itself, where people are seeing unusually high TBs of writes - most likely due to swap. See this: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=m1+writes https://hn.algolia.com/?q=m1+writes
dannyw 5y ago
SSDs that reach EOL should go into read only mode; not die.
- BearOso 5y ago
  Maybe it did. But it was the boot drive and soldered to the motherboard. So the OS would need to write to it and there’s no way to get the data off in a third-party manner. That’s kind of the big issue.
  - lutorm 5y ago
    Do new macs not show the "sad mac" or "cross-eyed mac" if they can't read the boot drive?
    - dannyw 5y ago
      That hasn't been a thing for a decade.

rvz 5y ago

And there you have it. What have I been telling the M1 hype squad over the past few months over first-gen products from Apple? [1] [2] [3] [4] Not even Apple support knows the cause of this issue. You are better off skipping it altogether and waiting for the M2 or higher. Losing a $1000 laptop due to heavy work is already one unacceptable thing, but replacing the whole unit and losing your work in order to 'fix it' is another unacceptable 'solution'. Always have a backup handy. I doubt the regular folk buying this machine would be bothered to do this anyway so the risk of this event runs higher for them. Especially when the SSD is baked into the motherboard. I rest my magnificent case. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26247531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26247531 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26247333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26247333 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26879674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26879674 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26887380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26887380

ecf 5y ago
> And there you have it. What have I been telling the M1 hype squad... > I rest my magnificent case Perhaps people didn’t care about what you had to say because you come off as insufferable.
- rvz 5y ago
  Or maybe that they now realise that they know I am insufferably right (and hate me for it) and are now coming to terms to what they have just purchased. Well I guess we'll have to see if the fanatics and the hype squad have learned their lesson into jumping into immature first-gen Apple products.
- rvz 5y ago
  So now I was censored because I was right, thus I will repeat my previous messsage: Or maybe that they now realise that they know I am insufferably right (and hate me for it) and are now coming to terms to what they have just purchased. Well I guess we'll have to see if the fanatics and the hype squad have learned their lesson into jumping into immature first-gen Apple products.
5y ago

thesnide 5y ago

Regardless of the hardware, it just tells one lesson : everything can fail, do have a full backup strategy.

Yeroc 5y ago
Certainly. The lesson I took from this was that the risk of data loss is much higher on the MacBooks these days because the it's not simply the chance of the SSD failing that could cause data loss but also a failure of any of the motherboard components as well. It's something I hadn't considered and something definitely worth keeping in mind.

aaroninsf 5y ago

This is an old story, and it's pretty clear that SSD EOL is the actual problem. That's a problem, for everyone using SSD, and for Apple, for not managing write, monitoring it, warning about it, ec., but this not a problem unique to the M1. The author should add an update to this effect.

gowld 5y ago

Spending $2399 on a maxed out but entry-level laptop, to use as an intense workstation, seems a bad idea. There's a reason the Mac Mini has a fan.

dannyw 5y ago
Thermal management isn't rocket silence. People don't report their (passive) iPads die from heat, even though in sure some have been subjected to extreme workstation workloads.
- ozten 5y ago
  However, a significant portion of rocket science is thermal management.
watermelon0 5y ago
Author didn't complain about performance issues, so I assume thermal throttling didn't kick in for their workload, or it wasn't noticeable.

terminalserver 5y ago

For anyone reading this..... macOS has Time Machine.... you just plug in an external usb disk as big as you can afford, tell time machine to use it, and it backs up your stuff in the background. There’s no excuse for losing data cause your primary disk crashes.

merb 5y ago
time machine uses snapshots, which might take your disk space away if you do not know it. just for anybody wondering why they do not have any disk space left of their 1tb drive, besides only using like 400g
- sparker72678 5y ago
  The disk space used for snapshots is automatically re-claimed by the OS when it's needed by the user. The trade off is near-instant backup images. And while MacOS sometimes has issues expediently clearing space the was previously used for snapshots, tools like DaisyDisk and others can force its hand if you need. Bottom line, you don't lose available disk space by using Time Machine.
  - kergonath 5y ago
    That’s the theory, and it works like that on my MBP. But for some reason on my old iMac, snapshots used to just accumulate and every so often things start crashing because there was no space left, causing all sorts of issues. Sometimes the OS couldn’t boot because of that, it really was a pain. And yes, you can nuke snapshots preemptively, but often the first visible sign was Mail having corruption issues because it’s database was borked, at which point it was too late.
hctaw 5y ago
Time Machine can't run on my Mac because there's not enough space on disk for it to run. Third party backup services that can function with the comically small default SSDs are preferable.

jbirer 5y ago

Just buy the 16GB one like I did, my SSD usage is roughly 50GB a day.

jimmies 5y ago

The problem here was that Apple is the only one who knows what's wrong with this new laptop and they don't have time to try to recover the data. Had the rights-to-repair law passed, the author would have had the option to try with a third party that could have saved his work (or to see whether it is an option). For many, $1000 for not losing two weeks of work is a small price to pay compared to redoing all the work. The issue with having only first-party repair is that you have no choice other than to lose data.

finneganscat 5y ago
You do have another choice: backup your important data, at least daily!
- nomel 5y ago
  What's old is new, I suppose. This is one of the reasons the cloud storage services became so popular. Properly backing up data, with multiple backups, not all piled in the flood prone corner of a closet, is not fun.
- pixl97 5y ago
  Which can be very difficult, on the road where you have low bandwidth especially.
  - cassianoleal 5y ago
    It's really not hard to carry an external drive. Even tiny thumb drives have massive capacities these days. Edit: typo
ska 5y ago
> is that you have no choice other than to lose data. Right-to-repair is great and all, but trusting the storage on a laptop is crazy. I've had basically the same thing happen with Dells, etc. Forget just laptops, though they are more failure prone. Trusting the storage on any single machine for critical work data for any longer than necessary is unprofessional.

terminalserver 5y ago

Is it possible that the small amount of RAM on M1 machines leads to virtual memory thrashing the SSD?

watermelon0 5y ago
Yes. There were many articles lately about heavy writes due to swapping, but in most cases it shouldn't impact the lifespan so much.

dandare 5y ago

What does it mean the SSD is soldered to the motherboard? If I was to loose 2 months of work I would rip the disks off with my teeth. What is the real issue here?

flemhans 5y ago
The data is encrypted with the key stored in the T2 chip (if it's still called that) so you couldn't even just solder it to another board.
- watermelon0 5y ago
  Shouldn't Apple be able to recover the data if T2 is intact? It's possible that it's not worth to them, but I'd think it's doable.
  - viraptor 5y ago
    It's of course technically doable - the laptop itself is a device that talks to the drive via T2. But it's not something Apple wants to do. This was an issue for years already before M1 was introduced.
- hesk 5y ago
  Is this the same as Filevault or is it something different?
  - fmajid 5y ago
    Similar, but done in secure hardware in a T2 embedded inside the M1. The complete I/O path is protected.
hctaw 5y ago
You have to backup more regularly than every two months... And Apple replaces the entire motherboard if a component on it fails. The agreement that you may lose data has been around awhile and it's just boilerplate. When mucking around on a board they aren't going to guarantee anything - and I don't know if third party repair shops would do that either. There is always the chance someone screws up and breaks something.

jccalhoun 5y ago

Always have a back up! Always be backing up!

MR4D 5y ago

When Chia mining really ramps up, it will kill off SSDs faster than a T-rex in a petting zoo. I think the horror stories are going to just explode. If Apple has any weakness here (and this might be the butterfly keyboard all over again), then their products are going to get absolutely trashed in the media.[0] [0] - I use apple products pretty much everywhere, so I'm not looking forward to this, just presuming it will highlight any SSD weakness they might actually have.

CharlesW 5y ago
> When Chia mining really ramps up, it will kill off SSDs faster than a T-rex in a petting zoo. It's possible, but the "farmer" would have to be very serious about Chia and also not have read any FAQs, not watched any videos, not visited any forums, etc. A healthy fear of plotting on one's boot drive is the first thing drilled into Chia-heads' heads.

adrianmonk 5y ago

How technically feasible would it be for Apple to design emergency drive access into the hardware? Even though the flash is soldered on, you could still picture some kind of connector that allows a special device to operate that part of the board independently of the other stuff on the board. The special device could even be another laptop of the same model that supplies power. Disassemble both, connect a cable, and essentially "move" the drive to a different computer even though it's physically still unmoved.

Crosseye_Jack 5y ago
They used to have this. It was the Life boat connector. You would connect a magic black box to another mac and the connector to the logic boards life boat connector and you were able to migrate the customer data from the dead board. HOWEVER since they started encrypting the userdata at a hardware level they removed that port (because unless you went via the T2 chip the data you extracted from the drive would just be random data). EDIT: Could they in theory add a port to machines going forward that as long as the T2 chip (or what ever they use today, i think they incorperated it into the M1 chip itself) was still functional (as it holds the keys). Sure, why not? But they would have create a way to unlock the T2 (or what ever chip) but apple could create a way either by having a master key or devise keys based on serial numbers, etc etc etc. The Mac they use to recover data via the life boat connector could phone home to Apple and with the right auth be granted an auth to unlock the chip and allow data retrival. If I were to give apple the benefit of doubt, they might not want to as they don't want a way to be compelled to decrypt customers data on their hardware (Be it a 3 letter agency or a rouge employee).
- 542458 5y ago
  What about a port for unlocking the storage via T2 with the user’s password as normal, just bypassing everything else on the mobo so that data would still be recoverable if the dead component was something other than the T2 or storage?
  - Crosseye_Jack 5y ago

nunez 5y ago

Damn; if I had to mess with 800GB of data, there's no way that it would ONLY live on my laptop. Either way, sorry for OP's loss.

qayxc 5y ago
They mentioned they also had a custom Windows desktop as well. I guess one problem is that cross-system data synchronisation is still a non-trivial task.

ksec 5y ago

>3. I wasn’t the ONLY ONE who encountered this. You should check out the posts in MacRumors and this long thread in Reddit. This issue is quite well known for those who followed the Apple M1 rollout closely. My suspicious is that 1. It is the same USB / Thunderbolt Charging issue again as with previous Intel Mac. Where basically the USB-C somehow fried the CPU. ( Louis Rossmann has tons of video on it ) 2. The CPU / System is simply not designed for these type of usage. Especially with zero cooling. ( Sometimes, I would even leave the machine switched on for overnight rendering ) And it could also be other component that overheat. Apple needs to sell an official Time Capsule and Make Encrypted Backup to iCloud as option for Offline Backup.

Aeolun 5y ago
> The CPU / System is simply not designed for these type of usage. Maybe they shouldn’t advertise it as such then? I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a $2400 machine to be left on overnight without worrying about it being fried in the morning.
- eldelshell 5y ago
  You have to understand the Apple fanboy mindset. If it breaks, it's your fault. Soldered SSD? Do backups you dummy! Over heating? Just use it for email and browsing. Dead pixels? Get better glasses. No ESC key? Buy an external keyboard. Keys not working? Don't push them so hard, they're butterflies!
- ksec 5y ago
  >Maybe they shouldn’t advertise it as such then? I really dont think they did. It should be MacBook Pro with proper cooling. And personally I dont think overnight rendering, that is 100% CPU usage for 8+ hours should even be done on a laptop with no cooling fans. The $2400 price tag was because of Apple's ridiculous memory and Storage upgrade cost.
qayxc 5y ago
> The CPU / System is simply not designed for these type of usage. Especially with zero cooling. While I agree that consumer hardware in general and laptops in particular aren't designed for this usage, internal overheating should never be the cause for catastrophic failure. A system should be designed to throttle down or shut down before risking permanent damage. Should this be a heat related problem, I'd consider it a design flaw. Degraded performance is acceptable, permanent damage to non-replaceable internal hardware isn't. > Apple needs to sell an official Time Capsule and Make Encrypted Backup to iCloud as option for Offline Backup. Not going to happen. Since they disbanded the router team 3 years ago, there's zero chance of a Time Capsule product coming back anytime soon. They want customers to use iCloud and I think that's the better option for most users. People like the person in this blog are professionals and should use professional backup solutions (whether offline or online).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dm319 5y ago

Did anyone see the linked article at the end which described very large writes to the SSD in short time frames? I think Marcan had joined in on the twitter conversation. Lots of terabytes in just a fee months. Any ideas why this might be?

z2 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26244093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26244093
gothroach 5y ago
I saw him mention it at the end of this article, but the way the link was presented caused me to lose any interest in clicking it. Is it a story worth reading?
- acidbaseextract 5y ago
  The style was obnoxious I agree. If you're interested in buying an M1 MacBook — I wouldn't buy without being aware of the need to watch SSD writes. It seems like M1 devices with low memory have scenarios that they will use their SSDs crazy hard.
mastax 5y ago
Over-reliance on swap due to small RAM and fast SSD, I would guess.
akmarinov 5y ago
Wasn’t that debunked with the tool used to monitor the writes not being updated for M1s so it was showing garbage?

seltzered_ 5y ago

Was 'Target Disk Mode' (i.e. using another mac to mount the broken macbook) attempted to recover data?

digitxpc 5y ago
That would require the computer to be bootable, so it wouldn't allow you to get around a fried motherboard sadly.
- seltzered_ 5y ago
  "It just blacked out and showed no signs of life at all" good point, thanks.

diveanon 5y ago

This is why it never pays to be an early adopter. I am very satisfied in my decision to wait a few generations on this.

rvz 5y ago
Well we did warn them enough times to avoid first-gen Apple products and 'going all in' on the risk and now they are the ones crying on the bench having lost their work because 'it died' for no reason. It never hurts to wait for Apple to fix these issues. By then the software for Apple Silicon will be optimised on a faster chip. (M2 and higher)

Iwan-Zotow 5y ago

Beautiful plumage, isn't it?

jonplackett 5y ago

This is a very long article with only one real lesson learned. BACK UP! Just get a backblaze account or something.

ajross 5y ago
Two lessons: back up your shit, and prefer hardware with replaceable storage like M.2 slots.
- vxNsr 5y ago
  Yes very much this. A soldered SSD is absolutely putting a real limit to the lifespan of your pc. Not to mention making it unreasonably expensive to try to recover data in event of system board failure.
  - defaultname 5y ago
    Data recovery is impossible [IN THIS SITUATION for those who want to tell a tale about Linux] given full disk encryption. Even if the SSD were removable, and presuming there is no issue with the SSD -- they fail too -- there is nothing he could have gotten from it. This is true on modern Windows devices as well. There are devices that use passphrase encryption, or similes, but they're a usability problem so it isn't what Apple does. Devices are lost (failed, stolen, burned, destroyed) as a simple fact of life. Anyone who doesn't have an immediate recovery process with negligible loss simply isn't being a professional. His laptop could have easily been nicked from a coffee shop. It's why most of us simply don't sweat this at all. I will never be in a situation where I'm desperate to recover what's on a device. Remarkable that the comments are full of people speculating about failures and then, remarkably, getting angry and on a soap box about their speculation. Computing device failed. Amazing story at 11!
    - Aeolun 5y ago
      > I will never be in a situation where I'm desperate to recover what's on a device. I will never be in a situation where I’m desperate to recover two months worth of data, but even losing a day is pretty inconvenient.

wooque 5y ago

>You have 1 free member-only story left this month. Sign up for Medium and get an extra one for a love of God stop using Medium

KMnO4 5y ago
Is there an objectively better (in every way) alternative to Medium? Not for me (I host me own), but for the next time it comes up. I don’t want to tell people “don’t use Medium” without an alternative to suggest.
- alex_g 5y ago
  Ghost, or Wordpress, or just write some markdown or html. Honestly it doesn't need to be better in every way to be better.
  - fmajid 5y ago
    GitHub pages with Hugo: https://gohugo.io/hosting-and-deployment/hosting-on-github/ https://gohugo.io/hosting-and-deployment/hosting-on-github/
  - benhurmarcel 5y ago
    Ghost and Wordpress aren't free. Medium is.
    - alex_g 5y ago
      Both are free. As for hosting, Wordpress has a free hosting option.
- diragon 5y ago
  Writing on a piece of paper and throwing it to the wind? Seriously, though, if you have an inch of computing skills, any of the static site generators combined with a free tier CDN like Netlify. The most popular generators are pretty easy to use. But perhaps I'm underestimating how hard that actually is.

solarkraft 5y ago

> You can technically desolder the SSD from the logic board Well, you can, but even that wouldn’t get you your data back. It’s all encrypted, tied to the hardware. There are data recovery tools for MacBooks, but I suppose in this specific case an essential part for that was broken. The data probably isn’t worth the price of doing it (no warranty, all money gone if it fails), but if it was you could’ve called up a component level repair shop, which can sometimes fix issues at a fraction of what Apple charges and preserve your data by replacing only broken components instead of rushing to replace the whole board.

grishka 5y ago
> It’s all encrypted, tied to the hardware. And that's a terrible idea to begin with. Yes, encryption is a good thing. But it's only good as long as it's not tied to a particular piece of hardware against user's will. You should be able to remove an SSD from a dead laptop and plug it into a working one, and, after entering the correct password, be able to access it. Apple seems to view this exact scenario as an attack for some reason.
- fmajid 5y ago
  An active component like the T2 can ensure the keys are erased after N failed attempts. A passive encryption key cannot. There are indeed also disadvantages to this.
  - grishka 5y ago
    But then you are encouraged to circumvent this by making backups.
  - fomine3 5y ago
    Similarly on PC, TPM lockout for decrypt PIN after some tries, then BitLocker requires user to input very long generated passphrase (virtually unbreakable, same as Apple's internal key). They can also export encryption key. Of course exported key must be stored to secure place.

stavrus 5y ago

This isn't specific to the M1. I had my MBP 2016 13" die in the same exact way about two years ago. Same failure mode where it just refused to boot no matter what I did, though it was possible to sort of turn it on if you left it alone for a couple of days. Was able to use that to pull the data off the machine and create a Time Machine backup, but it turns out that Time Machine can lie to you about having completed a backup so I would have lost all of my data were it not for the manual backup I performed. What was frustrating to me was that I knew my model had a diagnostics port that allowed direct access to the SSD (see https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/24/apple-special-cdm-tool-macbook-pro-ssd-recover-repairs/ https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/24/apple-special-cdm-tool-macboo...) to pull the data off of it, but the service wasn't offered when I went to get my machine repaired. I was forced to accept the data loss from having the logic board replaced. I later had bluetooth issues on the same laptop, and that required another logic board replacement. Which, surprise, came with data loss once again. Also had a lot of fun learning with that repair that Apple changed the extension backups are stored as, and Time Machine can't recognize the new one as a restore source for some reason unless you rename the folder to use the old one. Wasted quite a few hours on that, and Apple's phone support had no idea about why Time Machine wasn't seeing it. Anyway, moral of the story is, backup often, and have more than one backup method, unless you like losing your data.

thedanbob 5y ago
> Anyway, moral of the story is, backup often, and have more than one backup method, unless you like losing your data. And I would recommend that no one use Time Machine for backups. I have several anecdotes of my own where TM backups became silently corrupted or a seemingly good backup refused to restore, and you can find many more examples in the Apple forums. An unreliable backup isn’t a backup at all.
- vardump 5y ago
  I have 4x Time Machine backups. Hopefully I'm safe? Surely at least one of those separate independent backups should work?
  - 5y ago

cesarb 5y ago

> this laptop suddenly died when I was using Adobe Photoshop for a project. Yes, dead. It wasn’t taking its time to “shut down”. It just blacked out and showed no signs of life at all. [...] and it just wouldn’t turn on. I was in a similar situation once. My laptop suddenly died, and it just wouldn't turn on; plugging in the charger would instantly extinguish the charger light, and that light would only come back if I unplugged the charger from the wall and plugged it again to the wall (but not to the laptop). The solution was also similar: the entire motherboard had to be replaced under warranty. The cause was probably a short somewhere on the motherboard's power delivery subsystem. The main difference: my laptop's storage wasn't soldered onto the motherboard. I lost nothing other than the time it took before the technician came to do the repair.

eli 5y ago
There are so many good and easy backup solutions that I can’t imagine gambling on the SSD itself always being readable.

timnetworks 5y ago

It's a bit discouraging that the most valuable company in the world makes shiny garbage toys that are a nightmare to use in a professional capacity.

noisem4ker 5y ago
Even more discouraging is that the whole SV-influenced tech hivemind appears to have adopted them as their professional tools of choice.

FpUser 5y ago

200GB cache, working on internal 1TB SSD, huge video files and the OS all on 1TB SSD ( which might be questionable quality endurance wise ). This is just asking for disaster. I suspect that the SSD had just reached the limit on total bytes written and went belly up. Not having backup is a cherry on top. People just literally asking for disaster to happen. Curious why Medium even bother with publishing articles like this.

bobbylarrybobby 5y ago

The follow up article is interesting — after replacing the motherboard, the new Mac was writing tens of gigabytes of data a day, which is obviously not good for the SSD. Other users reported the same issue. That’s, like, really bad, right?

anfilt 5y ago

The idea of soldering the main storage still seems insane to me. Also it's not like a standard M.2 connector is profile connection either.

efficax 5y ago

devices fail. it’s not something you can avoid in the aggregate. backup your data!

mastrsushi 5y ago

>Okay, I may have exaggerated a little I really feel motivated to digest a blog post where even the writer admits that the title is click bait.

Perolan 5y ago

I had, and still have, a 2014 MacBook pro. I bought it used in 2015/16 but still paid near a grand so I babied it. Pushed it as a dev machine but took good physical care of it. Eventually same or similar issue where it just wouldn't boot. I took it to Apple and they said they had to send it off somewhere else but they suspected gpu failure, they noticed some screen tearing and said they could do that for me no problem and warrantied it. Got a call later that my MacBook had passed the gpu tests and they had to do more to figure out what was up. Another call and they said my MacBook had water damage and they wouldn't touch it. I called bs because they wouldn't have warrantied the screen if it had water damage, and also I babied the hell out of the thing. The person I was talking to said she was going to get to the bottom of it and would call back. They replaced every component in the damn laptop, but only after it broke and they tried to take no fault. I'm never going to stop complaining about this experience but at least I still have this laptop for now

brokenmachine 5y ago
I've seen so many comments online from people saying that Apple claimed there was water damage when they were sure that there wasn't. I bet there's something wrong with their water ingress detectors.
totalZero 5y ago
I am having a similarly bad experience with a Late 2013 MBP after Apple screwed up a battery replacement and the charging port started overheating. I took it to various Apple stores multiple times (they wouldn't do the repair by mail). First time, they didn't even test the charging system; battery cycle count was the same when I picked it up. Second time, they gave the laptop back to me with the bottom cover screws installed in the wrong places. Third time, they tried to tell me it was a preexisting issue or maybe due to a third-party SSD. The people involved are very friendly but none of them seem to have any idea how a computer works, and they seem to care more about managing my expectations and making me disinfect the LCD with an alcohol wipe than they do about repairing a computer they damaged.

roop 5y ago

If you're using a USB hub/dock (the author says he isn't), you should upgrade to macOS 11.2.2 because: > macOS Big Sur 11.2.2 prevents MacBook Pro (2019 or later) and MacBook Air (2020 or later) models from incurring damage when they are connected to certain third-party, non-compliant powered USB-C hubs and docks. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211896#macos1122 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211896#macos1122

totalZero 5y ago
How would I test for damage? I had a Sanho/Hyperdrive dock that repeatedly crashed my 2020 MBP. I switched it out for a CalDigit and haven't had any problems since then, but I don't know how to ensure that nothing was harmed.
- roop 5y ago
  I don’t know. You should contact Apple support maybe?

mproud 5y ago

I don't care what kind of computer you have. Back up your shit.

brokenmachine 5y ago

All these comments explaining that you can't have an SSD that's not permanently locked to the secure enclave on the Logic Board™ because of "security". Which means that a customer really needs a backup... Which by definition can't be locked to the motherboard. SMH. Apple™ apologists come up with any justification, no matter how implausible, for Apple™'s user-hostile self-serving design choices. I guess it's just a happy coincidence that then they can charge customers for using their Cloud as a backup, because they've removed any autonomy that the customer might have had otherwise. One button saying, "set your own recovery password", and one 20c connector, and then any customer or lowly genius bar™ Logic Board™ replacement drone could easily transplant the drive into another PC when the self destructing crap Apple™-designed Logic board™ with tiny inadequate heatsink or secure enclave™ linked touchbar or dust-powered exploding keyboard switch or whatever other obvious self destruct mechanism they've designed in inevitably kicks the bucket. The cherry on the shit sundae is that they would still get to sell another mac to the lucky 𝚟̶𝚒̶𝚌̶𝚝̶𝚒̶𝚖̶ customer, so there is no advantage to them in preventing this. Apple™ just doing asshole things because Apple™. It's like the story of the scorpion and the frog [1]. "I couldn't help it. It's in my nature." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog#Synopsis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog#Syno...

reph2097 5y ago

That money will buy you two Zenbooks, both of which are faster and easier to repair. Just saying.

Gys 5y ago

The article mentions https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx to regularly check the SSD and aware of potential problems. Has anybody experience with this app?

lasereyes136 5y ago

The lesson here is Always backup your data on a continuous basis! Computers break in unrecoverable ways all the time. While there is a low chance of your computer doing that, it happens. Macs come with Time Machine just for this reason, use it.